What is Downtime?
Downtime is when a website is totally or partially inaccessible to all or some of its users. Visitors accessing a downed site typically receive a message like “This page isn’t working.” The site may also return an HTTP 5xx error, indicating a server error is preventing them from accessing the site.
When the site is down, some parts may function normally. However, other pages and resources may be inaccessible, and visitors will also be limited in the actions they can perform on the site.
For example, the page’s images and videos may not load, the login and sign-up options may not work, and visitors cannot leave comments.
A downtime could result from human error, server issues, software incompatibility, or malicious attacks that overload the server. A sudden increase in traffic to your site will also overload your server, leading to downtime.
How Website Downtime Affects SEO
Search engine crawlers cannot access a site experiencing downtime. This prevents them from crawling, adding, or updating the content in their Index. So, downtimes prevent sites from getting crawled and indexed.
Downtime also affects the site’s usability and user experience. Visitors cannot access the site or use its full capabilities. This leads to a poor user experience, which will ultimately cause them to leave the site, increasing your Absprungrate.
Sites that link to the content will have broken links, which will ultimately cause them to remove the backlinks pointing to the site.
Overall, downtime will lead to everything you do not want: a higher bounce rate, fewer backlinks, lower search rankings, and loss of traffic. It will also cause your visitors and potential sites that could link to you to have less trust in your site.
Crawlers will also reduce the rate at which they crawl the site if they encounter downtime during multiple visits. If the downtime continues for a considerable period, the search engine will remove the site from its index. Once this happens, it may be difficult to recover the lost rankings.
Why a Site May Experience Downtime
A site can experience full or partial downtime for a variety of reasons. These downtimes can occur unexpectedly and may last for varying lengths of time. Some of them include the following.
1 Server Overload
A server can become overloaded when it receives more traffic or requests than it can handle. While this can result from a sudden increase in visitors, it may also be caused by inefficient resource management, poorly optimized code, or running too many processes simultaneously.
2 Hardware Failures
Hardware failures occur when the physical components of a server, such as hard drives, processors, or memory, malfunction or stop working. These failures can result from a variety of reasons, including overheating, power surges, and regular wear and tear.
3 DNS Issues
DNS issues can occur when the Domain Name System, which translates domain names into IP addresses, fails to function properly. This can happen due to misconfigured DNS settings or expired domain names.
4 DDoS Attacks
DDoS attacks occur when a website receives an overwhelming amount of malicious traffic intended to overwhelm the server and take it offline. Such traffic can result in the server becoming overloaded and unresponsive and make the site inaccessible.
5 Database Errors
Database errors occur when a website’s database becomes inaccessible or fails to function correctly. This can happen due to misconfigurations, corrupted data, or server overloads.
6 Expired Domain Name
An expired domain name occurs when a website’s domain registration is not renewed before its expiration date. This makes the website inaccessible to visitors, and services associated with the domain, such as custom email addresses, will also stop functioning.
7 Software Bugs or Glitches
Software bugs or glitches occur when an error in the site’s code causes it to malfunction or fail to operate as intended. These issues can result in pages not loading or working correctly. Bugs may arise from poorly written code, compatibility issues, and software updates.
8 Hosting Provider Issues
Hosting provider issues happen when the company responsible for hosting the website experiences problems. These can range from server outages to misconfigurations.
9 SSL Certificate Problems
SSL certificate problems occur when the security certificate used to encrypt data between the server and users either expires or is misconfigured. This can result in downtimes or lead to browsers showing warnings that the site is not secure.
10 Power Outages
Power outages happen when there is a loss of electrical power to the server hosting the website. This can result in immediate downtime, as the server becomes unreachable.
11 Network Failures
Network failures occur when there are problems with the connection between the website’s server and the internet. This can happen due to issues with the hosting provider’s network.
12 Configuration Errors
Configuration errors occur when settings on the server or website are incorrect. Misconfigured settings can cause the site to crash. It may also cause certain features to break or prevent the site from loading altogether.
13 Cybersecurity Breaches
Cybersecurity breaches happen when attackers exploit vulnerabilities in a website to gain unauthorized access or disrupt service. Depending on the intent of the hacker, this can lead to data theft, defacement, or complete site downtime.